


Bookshop Daisies

by omphale23



Category: Life
Genre: Gen, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:17:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing Charlie did when he was finally released was buy a book. No, the second thing he did was buy a book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bookshop Daisies

**Author's Note:**

> Written for **miss_zedem**'s fluff!battle.

The first thing Charlie did when he was finally released was buy a book. No, the second thing he did was buy a book. The first thing he did was get in Constance's shiny car and let her drive him to a hotel for a shower and new clothes, ones that were nothing like his old clothes, the clothes that he had left hanging in a closet in an apartment where strangers lived now.

The hotel was nicer than anywhere Charlie had ever seen, with marble floors and warm white bathrobes and it took him a few minutes to do anything more than stand at the window and watch Los Angeles go by beneath his feet. The cars were tiny in the streets, and the people walked past each other and didn't stop. No one looked up at the sky.

The bathroom was bigger than his cell. The water was hot, and Charlie spent an hour under it, eyes closed and trying to empty his mind of the refrain _freewhatdoesthatmeanfreewhatthehellisnextfree_. He failed, but the effort is enough. He keeps trying.

And then he went to the bookstore, a shop with plastic daisies in the windows and a pretty girl behind the counter. He went there in a taxi that smelled of hairspray and lonely people, and even though it was three in the afternoon on a Tuesday there were still so many people, people everywhere talking and laughing and walking around, so many people that Charlie got a little dizzy with it. It was dizzying and by the time he found the philosophy section (_all those books, so many words to choose, so many things to know that he hadn't thought about before_) he had to sit down for a moment, head in his hands, to think about what to do next. To think and make himself quiet and he didn't wish that he was somewhere else again but he could see the wish hovering there, waiting for him to say hello.

He should have thought about what came next, about what came after, but he hadn't and now he was lost and free and it was all much more tiring than he had expected. Louder than he remembered. Everything was more and less and strange.

Zen was easier in prison. But this is outside, this is where he is now, and so he'll do his best.


End file.
